child and can't sleep with him around.

Johnny himself puts up a good fight early on. When the kidnappers try to lure him in, Johnny throws a piece of brick at Bill. At the campsite, he doesn't try to escape for home and even tells the kidnappers that he actually prefers this kidnapping to returning there:

I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?

Again, this is not the expected character development, and Johnny's precocious personality finally proves too much for the men who have kidnapped him.

In the end comes the greatest comedic twist of the story—the kidnappers are forced to pay Johnny's father to take the child back. Their plans have been completely thwarted by a "boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the newsstand when you want to catch a train."

Much of the humor in this very humorous short story comes from role-reversal. The hapless kidnappers, Sam and Bill, are supposed to be in charge of little Johnny Dorset, the boy they've just abducted for ransom. But over the course of his brief captivity, Johnny turns the tables on his kidnappers by driving them to distraction due to his brattish ways. Before long, he's in control of this particular relationship, to the extent that Sam and Bill realize they have no choice but to cut their losses and take the boy back home to his father.

When they do this, more humor is generated, once again from a role-reversal. Sam and Bill were supposed to kidnap little Johnny so that they could obtain a substantial sum of ransom money from his father. But when they bring him back home, they are shocked to hear Johnny's father demand that they pay him for the boy's return. One can reasonably infer from this demand that the boy is as much of an obstreperous little brat at home as he was when he was with Sam and Bill. In the end, the two wannabe master criminals have no choice but to pay up; anything to take Johnny Dorset off their hands.

There are several different types of comedic elements included within the story "The Ransom of Red Chief," with multiple examples of each type of humor.

The speech pattern of Sam, the narrator of the story, includes expressions and descriptive phrases that employ tongue-in-cheek ironic humor. The name of the town where the original kidnapping was committed was Summit (usually meaning the top of a mountain or hill), but the place was described as being "as flat as a flannel-cake."

The speech of the boy includes all the energy and enthusiasm and ridiculous jumps in subject matter that can be imagined.

I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot?

The kinds of situations that arise as the bandits attempt to control their captive are full of comically ironic role-reversals, as the adults quickly discover they have no chance of containing the run-away imagination and uninhibited enthusiasm of this boy for the high adventure of acting out his fantasies as Red Chief, and later as the Black Scout. Bill, in particular, suffers greatly at the hands of Red Chief and evolves from being a willing participant in the kidnapping to sending the boy back home, reducing the amount of ransom being demanded, and finally advocating they concede and pay Ebenezer Dorset to reclaim the boy.

Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all?...Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?

Johnny Dorset is the son of Ebenezer Dorset, who is a prominent citizen of Summit and a wealthy mortgage fancier. Sam and Bill are the two outlaws who kidnap Johnny Dorset in hopes of ransoming him off and getting his wealthy father to pay a handsome sum for Johnny's return. However, the two kidnappers do not anticipate Johnny's antics as he begins to terrorize them while they are waiting for his father to respond to their ransom note.

Johnny Dorset is portrayed as a rambunctious, bold child, who thoroughly enjoys the adventure of camping with outlaws in the great outdoors. He insists on being called Red Chief and proceeds to terrorize Bill and annoy Sam while they are waiting to receive his ransom.

Ironically, Johnny's father writes a letter to the outlaws demanding two hundred and fifty dollars to take his son back and the outlaws comply. Sam and Bill are forced to come up with a scheme to return Johnny and end up paying Ebenezer Dorset the money to take back Red Chief.

The name Johnny Dorset does not occur in the story until the end.  The kidnappers decide to kidnap a child of a prominent citizen for the purpose of getting money.  They chose the only child of Ebenezer Dorset, a mortgage financier.  They figured they could shake down the old man for about two thousand dollars. 

When they kidnap the boy, he puts up a tremendous fight, but as soon as they get him back to the cave where they are staying, the boy starts playing Indians and calls himself Red Chief.  For the rest of the story, he is called Red Chief.  It isn’t until the kidnappers get a response from their ransom note that the name Johnny Dorset is mentioned.  The old man responds,

“You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands.“ (pg 7)

That is when we learn that the kidnapped boy is Johnny Dorset.  The kidnappers pay the ransom and gladly leave him with his father. 

My copy of the story comes from the internet.  The page numbers may be different in your copy, but it should give you a basic idea of where to locate the information.  

Ebenezer Dorset, the father of the kidnapped boy who calls himself Red Chief, takes a few actions in the story. Some of them we must assume because we see the result of the action but aren't actually told of it when it happens. Since Sam is the narrator, we see and know only what he sees and knows.

Dorset receives the letter Sam sends that demands ransom. Upon receiving it, he scribbles back a note in a "crabbed hand" that makes a counter proposition. He states he will take Red Chief off the hands of the kidnappers if they pay him $250 and bring the child that night after dark. He sends a boy on a bicycle to put the note into the place Sam had instructed him to put the ransom money.

When Sam and Bill come to return Red Chief, Dorset comes to the door. He accepts the money from Sam into his outstretched hand. He peels his son off the leg of Bill and warns him that he should flee quickly because he can only hold the boy about ten minutes since he is not as strong as he used to be. 

A comic story, play, or novel usually pivots on hyperbole (exaggeration) and reversal of expectations, and in this story, O. Henry does not disappoint.

Sam and Bill think it will be easy money for them to kidnap little Johnny and exact a handsome ransom from his father, the wealthy Mr. Dorset.

The comedic elements lie in the exaggerated way everything goes contrary to expectation. Johnny shows no reluctance to be kidnapped but comes along happily. Rather than terrifying the little Johnny by kidnapping him, the little boy terrifies his kidnappers. He attempts to scalp Bill as part of an Indian game, and attacks his kidnappers with a hot potato and a rock. By the end of the story, rather than getting a ransom, the hapless kidnapper duo pays Mr. Dorset $250 to take the wildly energetic child off their hands.

We laugh because this is a classic trickster tale, in which the seemingly powerless person bests the two who appear to hold all the power.